


To Burrow into You

by wildestranger



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-13
Updated: 2009-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 14:48:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildestranger/pseuds/wildestranger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the atomic challenge in 2005 with prompt: In science and in medicine, I was a stranger you took me in.</p>
    </blockquote>





	To Burrow into You

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the atomic challenge in 2005 with prompt: In science and in medicine, I was a stranger you took me in.

Draco sleeps badly. Neville has given up trying to find rest burrowed into him; the slightest contact makes Draco's skin feverish and results in fretfulness and irritated kicking of sheets and shins. Draco turns around from one side to the other, three, five, seven times before falling asleep, any one position too uncomfortable to be retained. Neville must keep to his side of the bed (somehow too big even with both of them) or join Draco in restless exhaustion. Yet he is careful about not saying anything that might suggest sleeping apart.

They don't talk about love; the few times Hermione mentions something in passing (defending their relationship to Harry and Ron, not that Draco would care) Draco starts spitting venom about foolish Gryffindors and their ridiculous self-delusions. Then he bends Neville over his desk in the library and fucks him with hard, precise movements, moaning dirty things into Neville's ear until he is lost to everything except Draco's brittle fingers on his hip and Draco's tongue moving down his spine.

But sometimes Neville places his hand on Draco's back, fingers spread over clammy skin, and Draco doesn't push him away. Neville asks himself, _is this enough, is this what I should hope for, the most, the least, or more?_

Can there be more?

 

***

Neville has always considered it presumptuous to ask what somebody is thinking. If Draco wants to share his thoughts, he will do so without prompting; prodding him about it can only result in annoyance. Neville doesn't ask what causes those fits of devastating rage; there are too many reasons and he knows them well enough. When he arrives for dinner to find broken plates scattered across the dining room and the house-elves hiding in the linen closet, he merely gives a tight smile and flicks his wand to clear the mess. He knows that it often irritates Draco that he shows no reaction, makes no accusations. But he needs it too, needs the calm for himself in order to handle things.

Neville isn't naïve enough to think that everything would be fine if only he knew Draco's secrets. Making Draco talk would not make him say anything that would help; yet there are times when Neville longs for words, for signs he can understand. The frowns and scowls that flit across Draco's face remain incomprehensible, the dissatisfaction they represent still as meaningless and vague as ever. There is no certain correlation between Draco's smirks, his cold and brutal sarcasm, and the things Neville knows to be true, about him, about them.

Yet desire is the most deceitful and damaging of things, and Neville can't not want him.

***

When he wakes up to find Draco curled up under his arm, huddled under the sheets and shivering desperately, his first reaction is of uneasiness. Not because he dislikes the feel of the body beside him, beloved and acknowledged as it has been for some time now. But before he recognises the signs of fever and illness in the fidgeting form, there's an unspoken dread of change, of things being not quite right. If Draco clings to him in sleep then something is wrong, something is different and Neville doesn't want Draco to start shifting the boundaries of their relationship on his own. Such drastic action might result in him being pushed aside without a way back in. Or tear apart whatever it is that binds them now, lust or despair, unnamed and unknowable.

It's a relief, then, to find a sickness in the place of some more destructive harm and to find ways to battle it. Potions and spells and healthy food, healing things coming out of his own hands. He spreads the ointment on Draco's skin with reverent fingers, every stretch of smooth flesh a promise, a threat, a prayer.

***

Neville won't not sleep next to Draco despite the discomfort, despite the petulance and the incessant whining it produces. He lies on his side, his breathing careful and quiet, and watches the dragged rise and fall of Draco's chest. There is torture in the twitching of his hands, the sickening heat of the skin. Neville has to stop himself from grinding his teeth.

It used to be a pleasure, a treat, to dig his fingers into moist earth and to feel it live. Fragile roots impossibly green in his hands, young and tender, growing with his help. But now it is merely an act for some other purpose, and his focus is elsewhere, thinking up uses for aconite, circling around the causes of poison and blood and disease. There is no relief in the motion of his hands and he starts to develop an ache in his bones, a ghostly pain imitating the jerks and whimpers of Draco's body.

When the cure finds him, it isn't a flash of insight, sudden and complete. The subtle knowledge he has gathered from endless insomniac nights, the quiet shifts and turns of the beloved body, coils into an elaborate and uncertain construction of thought. Not an answer, but a possibility.

***

There is another knowledge Neville has gained. The movement of bones under muscles, of skin over flesh has turned into a language he understands, a system of signs he can decipher. And Draco's body, the pale limbs now shuddering with a different sort of fever, has become a book he reads with his mouth and his fingers.

Words as well develop new meanings, and Neville wonders if they always meant the things they mean now, if it was only that he was deaf before. Draco kisses his fears into Neville's shoulder, his longing a light flickering of tongue inside Neville's elbow. The lines on his forehead don't say_ I hate the world and everything in it, _but _maybe, can you, can we, _instead.

The faith placed upon him by such words is almost too much to bear, and Neville falters, closes his eyes and uses his hands to convey his meaning. Always soft, always reverent lest they press too hard and bruise, or snap the fragile bones with their clumsiness.

Neville doesn't call it passion or strength.

***

He gets used to waking up with cold air and sweaty hands on his body, a wet patch below his ear where Draco's mouth likes to sleep. It isn't nightmares that cause the constant movement in the dark of their bed, but something else that keeps Draco's warm chest pressed to Neville's side all night and the fluttering hand moving along his ribs. Neville doesn't ask and is once again paralysed by his own cowardice, the dread and shame that steal the words from his mouth.

Yet there is a new look that he is given; no subtle flash of eyes to tempt and disconcert, no speculation or wonder, but a look of knowing. And it occurs to Neville that it has always been Draco who is the object of attention and interest in their relationship, the one whose moods must be studied and managed, the one who must be known. There is something disturbing about those grey eyes, not cold for once, not smirking in amusement or contempt, but looking at him as if they know him, as if they want to know.

Neville tries to look away but can't.

***

It sinks into him like wine, a cool, dark liquid falling down his throat and filling him with treacherous warmth. A thought he cannot trust yet; not because Draco is unreliable, not in something like this, but because it is impossible for a mind like his to believe such things. It isn't a choice, precisely, for although he could logically decide to take the chance, to choose the danger, there would still be an immovable pit of disbelief somewhere in his heart.

Yet when Draco licks Neville's lips as if they were the richest honey, heavy and delicious on his tongue, and when he strokes his thumbs on Neville's cheeks (steady fingers, no matter how frail), something is dislodged inside him, something moves. A new growth perhaps, a thing longer disturbing and to be feared. A cure for an illness he didn't know he had, a relief or a miracle.

It bothers him to learn that a want is more than an urge, that desire implies by its very nature a longing to be desired in return. There is no security for him, and the solemn faith he has held so long, his last bastion of invulnerability, begins to crumble when Draco touches him with this new knowledge in his fingertips.

Yet, as Draco presses his cheek to Neville's and holds his shoulder blades with delicate hands, he finds he doesn't mind.


End file.
